And now for a little inside baseball with my social science colleagues — sorry if this isn't of interest or use to my friends in humanities or natural sciences. I was talking a few days ago with a senior pseudologist whom I respect as a good and well-published scholar. Since I'm permanently in a state of mild anxiety about my professional development nowadays, I pressed hir about what I should be focusing on right now for publications: in specific, I was thinking of pursuing an article in an edited volume. Although I didn't spell this out to my colleague, my thought was that it would be beneficial to have an article in a thematic collection, where my work might be more easily noticed by people seeking out such materials; plus, as I supposed, it would be useful to get my name into print alongside the names of other scholars engaged in similar work, who would then themselves also be exposed to my research.
My colleague, though, blew this idea off, explaining that the best edited volumes tend to come out of conferences organized around a particular theme, because everyone is already in contact with each other. If I'm not lucky enough to fall into such a conference, I need to organize one myself, and that is a humongous pain in the ass. And then, once the conference yields interest from a publisher, the conference organizer tends to fall into the role of volume editor. (Yes, even bigger pain in the ass!) So, as zi continued, I shouldn't bother with edited volumes and all that comes with them until I already have a tenure-track job and can count on at least some institutional support for the drudgery associated with editing.
Moreover, zi went on, in a larger sense, I shouldn't even think about edited volumes right now, because both edited book and article therein count for relatively little with tenure review committees in Pseudology. Far more important, zi told me, to get my first book finished and accepted for publication. Once that's a done deal, I should focus on pounding out some articles in reputable journals. Only after I have done all of this, and landed myself a relatively secure job, should I turn my attention toward the project of creating an edited volume.
I received this as sincere advice, because my colleague in fact didn't do this hirself: zi actually concentrated on edited volumes for some time early on, which, as I now gather, slowed down hir progress on hir first book. As a result, zi went through some years on the job market without a t-t position, because zi had no book, no articles, and all of hir work on both book and various contributed chapters was tied up in editing processes that dragged on for ages. Zi felt that zi had made a tactical error early in the game, and advised me not to do the same.
I wonder if others have heard similar or conflicting advice, within our broad category of social science. (Obviously, this advice doesn't hold for, say, biomedical researchers, who need to bang out journal articles ASAP and have no structural reason to write a book at all.) How does this compare with what you have heard?
